Niche Analysis

Following is my blogging assignment for this week.

What is the significance of niche blogging in the era of ‘the long tail’? Define a niche for your blog and discuss by profiling two relevant sites.

To answer this question, I will first talk about ‘the long tail’. Then I will talk about ‘everyday technology’ the subject niche of this blog – and two technology bloggers I admire the most: John Gruber of Daring Fireball, and David Pogue of the New York Times.

Chris Anderson’s Long Tail

I have always known that the internet search engines ‘connects’ people with similar interest. Anyone with a particular interest is literally one click away from finding another person with a similar interest.

What I did not know is that there is a term for this. Chris Anderson, former editor in chief of WIRED magazine, call this phenomena ‘the long tail‘.

Put it simply, in the past, businesses need to cater for the mainstream and their local market to survive.

With the advent of electronic commerce (iTunes for musicians, eBay/Gumtree for traders, etc) and search engines, businesses can now ‘be found’ by people with similar interest – no matter how obscure that particular interest is.

This concept applies to wide range of businesses and activities – including blogging.

#Techtalk: Let’s talk about technology.

As an aspiring technologist, it would be natural for me to maintain a blog that primarily talks about technology. In particular, I’m interested in the everyday kind of technological innovation, ones that directly affects the life of many people.

For example, I’m interested in looking at the various ways different people use the iPad differently. I’m fascinated by open source mapping projects that allow everyone to take part and ‘map out the world’. I’m intrigued by public policies that move the boundaries of what is possible, and what is not.

I understand that there are already a lot of blogs that covers a similar topic. Other than the two examples featured in this post, there is Robert Scoble’s Scobleizer, Walt Mossberg’s AllThingsD, Engadget, Mashable, Gizmodo, and many others.

However, there aren’t many blogs that offer an insight to the adoption of ICT in Indonesia by an Indonesian technologist. This is the niche that I will focus on in this blog.

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball

If there is a definitive measure of a successful blog, Daring Fireball by John Gruber will surely make it to the list. It is now number 10 on Technorati’s top 100 technology blogs – or number 30 on Technorati’s top 100 blogs of all time.

However, while other blogs that made it on the top of the list are maintained by an ‘army’ of bloggers, Daring Fireball is a one man show. The blog presents Gruber’s take on technology, Apple, and everything that comes in between.

I liked how he have kept the design of his blog very simple, with minimal graphics. This allows me to read his writings comfortably for an extended period – especially for some of his long posts that are quite long (like, more than 7,200 words!).

Unlike other blogs that dedicates a large chunk of screen real estate to advertising, Gruber have decided to keep advertising space on the actual blog very small. His main income comes fromsyndicated feed sponsorship of his blog – something that you can’t actually see on the actual blog.

Every time I read Gruber, I feel like I’m reading a tech pr0n. It feels like he have invested a significant amount of time into each one of his posts. In the end, Daring Fireball is his full-time job.

David Pogue’s New York Times Technology Blog

Whereas Gruber talks mostly about the ‘geeky’ aspect of technology and have stayed ‘behind the screen’ (e.g. there is no ‘About Me’ page on Gruber’s blog), New York Times technology columnist David Pogue takes a different approach. In addition to a difference in personality, this might also be because a difference in the nature of their work.

In contrast to Gruber, Pogue targets a larger niche. As a newspaper columnist, he needs to appeal to a larger number of readers – readers of the New York Times.

Pogue, like me, likes to talk about everyday technologies that many people can relate to . Unlike Gruber, Pogue avoids the use of technical language where possible. For example, Pogue is not interested in ‘screen resolution’ – he is interested in the difference in ‘experience’ that a bigger screen resolution enables.

Furthermore, Pogue’s blog is full of multimedia, from simple ‘holiday style’ pictures to downright funny video entries.

In short, Pogue’s approach is the approach I want to adopt for this blog. Short, light, but informative. Who knows, maybe this will help me get a job at a leading English language newspaper just like Pogue.

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Tags: blog, long tail, me, technology